Biden’s First 100 Days: The Far Left Is Calling the Shots
'The first 100 days have left much to be desired. Over a few short months, the Biden administration seems to have given up on selling actual ‘unity’ in favor of catnip for their liberal base, covered with a hefty coat of false advertising.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding President Biden’s first 100 days in office:
“Tonight, President Biden will deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress.
“I’ll be there. And like my fellow Kentuckians watching at home, I’ll be curious to hear how the President tries to square his rhetoric with his Administration’s actions over the past 100 days.
“Back in January, many Americans hoped they could take the incoming President at his word.
“After a year spent beating back an historic pandemic and grappling with civil unrest, President Biden pledged he would be ‘a president for all Americans,’ with plans to ‘repair,’ ‘restore,’ and ‘heal.’
“The American people elected a 50-50 Senate, a closely-divided House, and a president who preached moderation. He promised that his ‘whole soul’ was committed to ‘uniting our people.’
“Many hoped his administration would reflect that promise.
“But the first 100 days have left much to be desired.
“Over a few short months, the Biden administration seems to have given up on selling actual ‘unity’ in favor of catnip for their liberal base, covered with a hefty coat of false advertising.
“That’s how the so-called “American Rescue Plan”, a grab-bag spending bill that directed less than 10% to vaccines and pandemic healthcare, was marketed as a COVID-19 relief measure.
“In actuality, it sent huge sums of money to state governments whose revenues had already rebounded and declared war on the formerly bipartisan consensus that welfare spending should be linked to work.
“Or take H.R. 1, the sweeping effort by Democrats to mount a partisan takeover of all 50 states’ voting laws, along with the Federal Election Commission for good measure. After a Republican won the White House in 2016, this was billed as a massive overhaul for a broken democracy.
“Now, a nearly identical plan is instead being marketed as a modest dose of preventative maintenance. It’s still the same take-over it’s always been.
“And now we have the “American Jobs Plan”, another multi-trillion-dollar smorgasbord of liberal social engineering that would decimate entire industries and spend only a small fraction on roads and bridges.
“It’s being sold as a serious effort to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure.
“It’s pretty brazen misdirection. At both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats have chosen to live in an alternate universe where both the campaign promises they made and the mandate the American people delivered were completely different than what happened here on planet Earth.
“Unfortunately, the real-life effects of this false advertising campaign have come thick and fast: pain and uncertainty at home, and dwindling leverage and virtue-signaling abroad.
First came mixed messages on the status of the pandemic.
“Existing vaccine distribution efforts surpassed President Biden’s supposedly ‘ambitious’ daily target on the day he was sworn in.
“When their own top health officials accidentally let slip the hard science on school reopenings, the Administration bowed to Big Labor and walked back their comments.
“And the President continues to issue directives that are strangely out-of-step with the science, like his big announcement several weeks ago that, if citizens behave themselves, he would permit them to enjoy small outdoor gatherings on July 4th that the CDC guidance already says would be safe right now.
“Then there is environmental policy. On Day One, President Biden rushed to cancel a pipeline project that would have employed thousands of Americans and freeze permitting for more safe, reliable domestic energy.
“He’s also announced an urgent return to an Obama-era deal that has proven unable to curb the signatories’ carbon emissions, and unnecessary for the United States to reduce our own.
“Why? Because the Far Left demanded it.
“In fact, the most radical liberals in Congress have taken credit for the influence of their Green New Deal manifesto over this President’s agenda.
“Meanwhile, Democrats have decidedly avoided taking ownership of the results of their own campaign rhetoric on immigration. Reckless mixed messaging has come home to roost in the form of a humanitarian and security crisis on our southern border.
“Soaring numbers of migrants are arriving, some wearing Biden campaign shirts, convinced -- as one put it -- that ‘Biden promised us that everything was going to change.’ Among them are record numbers of unaccompanied children, cramped into overflow facilities, who have become the tragic face of the story.
“Yet through it all, the White House’s foremost concern seems to have been to avoid calling this what it is: a crisis.
“And while broken immigration policy threatens security at our borders, a dangerously misguided foreign policy threatens our safety and standing abroad.
“Years of carefully-assembled multilateral sanctions had created an economic straitjacket around Iran’s terrorist state. But in its haste to turn the clocks back to the Obama era, President Biden’s negotiators have offered to give up massive portions of this leverage just to get Iran back to a failed nuclear deal.
“Further east, American forces have been ordered to make a hasty, total withdrawal from Afghanistan… To leave coalition partners and vulnerable Afghans high and dry, especially women and girls… To pave the way for Taliban rule… And to enable an al-Qaeda resurgence that could again threaten our homeland.
“And while national security experts are nearly unanimous in urging the Administration to focus on competition with Russia and China, the White House has proposed to cut defense spending after inflation and put our armed forces on the back foot.
“Ignoring the facts. Passing the buck. Squandering leverage.
“This is not what the American people bargained for. And they know it doesn’t have to be this way.
“Past presidents and Congresses have found ways to work effectively to make lasting and bipartisan progress on important issues.
“For example, when we’ve crafted smart policies to improve actual infrastructure… big, bipartisan majorities have signed on.
“Just last year, when we worked across the aisle on targeted rescue packages to help American families weather a once-in-a-century pandemic, not one of the 5 bills earned fewer than 90 votes in the Senate.
“This year, the story has been different.
“Behind President Biden’s familiar face, it’s like the most radical Washington Democrats have been handed the keys, and they’re trying to speed as far left as they can possibly go before American voters ask for their car back.
“But it’s not too late. This White House can shake off its daydreams of a sweeping socialist legacy that will never happen in the United States of America. They can recommit to solving our nation’s actual problems. To fostering consensus instead of deepening our divides.
“That is what the American people want and deserve.
“Not an Administration that chooses to govern like it owes everything to the radical left.”
Related Issues: Russia, COVID-19, Health Care, Green New Deal, China, America's Military, Infrastructure, Senate Democrats, Immigration
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